Environmental activism and advocacy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 204

However, the global green networks have not really succeeded in
using the Internet and ICT to develop a full alternative to the exist-
ing mainstream news and media. Most information politics by global
greens are fragmented, focus on temporary campaigns rather than sys-
tematic issue coverage over longer time horizons, show large diversity,
have limited reach in terms of audience and remain obscure. There
are, of course, a significant number of Web sites and organisations that
specialise in diffusing information of (environmental) NGOs by the
Internet. OneWorld, for instance, claims to be the online media gate-
way that most effectively informs a global audience about issues of sus-
tainable development, via a variety of thematic portals. 13 But the only
serious challenge to the conventional media might be Indymedia. Indy-
media 14 was founded in Seattle in 1999, during the protests against the
World Trade Organisation (WTO). It was designed to offer new, alter-
native news sources using the Internet, which challenged conventional
media in various characteristics and, at the same time, constructed
affinity, relations and identities to various parts of the more left-wing
civil society, engaged in anticapitalist and anticorporate globalisa-
tion. Although Indymedia continues to evolve, its initial ideas, codes
and core characteristics have sufficiently stabilised. 15 “Indymedia has
become the fastest growing, international, alternative media network in
the world, mushrooming into dozens of physical and virtual sites that
span six continents” (Nogueira, 2002 : 294). 16 Although Indymedia
is not so much an alternative for the large media conglomerates that
dominate media production, it does challenge these oligarchies that

targets for informational campaigns by NGOs, because of its poor labour and
environmental conditions, especially in its Asian factories. In May 2005, Nike
started to publish name and addresses of all its seven hundred supplying
factories on the Internet, in a unique move to full transparency and to
safeguard its reputation. Although its 2005 Corporate Responsibility Report
shows still significant problems with respect to labour conditions, the situation
in many of Nike's (supplying) factories did improve.

13

See http://www.oneworld.net.

14

See http://www.indymedia.org; see Morris, 2004 .

15

It has grown from one outlet to more than one hundred in three years (Bennett,
2004 ).

16

Inter Press Services (IPS) is another news agency that challenges the dominant
commercial international news agencies, by aligning more strongly with
NGOs, remaining independent from advertisements, focussing strongly on
cross-cultural communications and giving more access to developing countries.
With a network of journalists in more than one hundred countries, and
editorial offices in most regions, its structure comes closer to the main
transnational media conglomerates than Indymedia (cf. Chapter 10 ).